1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to communication systems generally, and more specifically, to a system that enables the asynchronous request of a data transfer operation (pull) via a first communication medium or channel, and synchronous receipt of the requested data over a wireless communication channel for storage/presentation in a wearable mobile computing device/appliance (e.g., a wrist watch device) capable of wirelessly accessing information from a network or communications device.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Computing, mobile and wireless communications technologies have been rapidly advancing-culminating in a variety of powerful user friendly devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones, pagers, etc. Today, it is possible to purchase handheld PDA's, e.g., palmtops such as the Palm Pilot®, that employ wireless communication devices and that combines computing, telephone/fax, and networking features. A typical PDA may function as a cellular phone, fax sender, and personal organizer and are pen-based, requiring a stylus for text entry. As such, these device incorporate handwriting recognition features and may even employ voice recognition technologies that react to voice input. Small devices such as the RIM 950 and the Motorola PageWriter 2000 pager use a small keyboard for input.
Today, the industry is striving to provide advancements by providing increased PC desktop-like functionality while both decreasing size and power requirements. More recently there have been attempts to incorporate some of the capabilities of the above devices into wrist watches. However, today, only special wearable watch devices are available that, besides time keeping functions, may possess a compass, or a Global Positioning System (GPS), or barometer, heart rate monitor, Personal Handy System (PHS) phone, pager, etc. There are shortcomings in these existing special function watches in that most of them are bulky, are mostly unconnected the Internet or other PC/network devices, have limited battery life, and, are difficult to use. These currently available special function wrist watches additionally have user interfaces that are quite limited in what they can display. For example, in the context of setting time in digital watches, currently, the user is only enabled to set the hour and minute independently, with time only advancing in one direction. Furthermore, most of them have a 6 to 8 seven segment LED or LCDs which can be used to display 6 or 8 digits/letters, and have a small number of indicators that can display AM/PM, Alarm on/off, etc. only at fixed locations within the display. A few watches are currently appearing on the market that have slightly richer display characteristics. Regardless, these various shortcomings have to be solved, otherwise there is no compelling reason for these watches to become popular. The design of a wrist watch for mobile computing applications offers a significant challenge because the watch is a small device. That is, both fitting components and power supplies such as batteries into such a small volume and given the limited screen size of watches pose limitations that have be overcome. Solving these issues is worthy because the watch is an attractive form as 1) it is one of the few devices that a very large fraction of the population is already accustomed to worldwide, 2) is accessible almost all the time, and, 3) is hard to lose.
It would thus be highly desirable to provide a wearable device/appliance (a wrist watch) capable of wirelessly accessing information and equipped with an interactive user interface and high resolution display for providing a variety of desktop PC-like functions.
A common operation pertaining to use of a pervasive device such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) like the Palm Pilot® is data synchronization, which refers to the communication of data at regular intervals. That is, the sender and receiver exchange data to keep their local copies of information up to date with each other. Thus, in an example application, a master copy of a calendar is maintained on a server or a PC, for example, and during synchronization, a copy of the calendar and the master copy on the server or PC are reconciled with more recent updates. Typically, when synchronizing a Palm Pilot® or like PDA device, a connection is made to the user's PC, for example, via a cradle interface device, or by connecting a cable to the PC or from the PC to the Web Server, and, the user waits until the data transfer operation (synchronization) is finished. The synchronization may take a long time depending on the amount of data to be transmitted. During this time the user has to wait close to the PC until the synchronization is finished which may be burdensome to the user for large data transfers. More recent devices such as 3Com's Palm VII™ has the ability to access wireless information, but has a drawback in that one cannot push data to the device. Any data to be received by the Palm VII™ is physically initiated by the user via the same communications channel that the requested data is to be received.
It would thus be additionally highly desirable to provide a wearable electronic device/appliance (a wrist watch) capable of wirelessly accessing data/information over a paging network or RF communications channel in response to a request for the data/information via another medium, such as a telephone or other device, in a manner that obviates the need for user interaction during the synchronization process.
This is to be differed from the well-known “push” data transfer model where “data” is pushed to the user at regular times regardless of the user's present needs, which leads to wasted resources—by storage and communication. Moreover, the user tends to ignore most of the pushed data because there is too much of it or it is stale or not relevant. Likewise, in the pull model the user has to wait for the data to be received and during this time the communication channel is being used, i.e., the data delivery model is synchronous.